Danika’s killer was still out there.
Jesiba answered on the first ring. “Is the screen ready?”
“Whenever you are.” Bryce typed the codes into her computer, trying to ignore the Governor staring at her like she was a steak and he was … something that ate steak. Raw. And moaning. “I’m dialing you in,” she declared.
Jesiba Roga appeared on the screen an instant later—and they both hung up their phones.
Behind the sorceress, the hotel suite was decorated in Pangeran splendor: paneled white walls with gilded molding, plush cream carpets and pale pink silk drapes, a four-poster oak bed big enough for her and the two males Bryce had heard when she called before.
Jesiba played as hard as she worked while over on the massive territory, seeking out more art for the gallery, either through visiting various archaeological digs or courting high-powered clients who already possessed them.
Despite having less than ten minutes, and despite using most of that time to make some very important calls, Jesiba’s flowing navy dress was immaculate, revealing tantalizing glimpses of a lush female body adorned with freshwater pearls at her ears and throat. Her cropped ash-blond hair glowed in the golden firstlight lamps—cut shorter on the sides, longer on the top. Effortlessly chic and casual. Her face …
Her face was both young and wise, bedroom-soft yet foreboding. Her pale gray eyes gleamed with glittering magic, alluring and deadly.
Bryce had never dared ask why Jesiba had defected from the witches centuries ago. Why she’d aligned herself with the House of Flame and Shadow and its leader, the Under-King—and what she did for him. She called herself a sorceress now. Never a witch.
“Morning, Micah,” Jesiba said mildly. A pleasant, disarming voice compared to that of other members of Flame and Shadow—the hoarse rasp of Reapers, or the silken tones of vampyrs.
“Jesiba,” Micah purred.
Jesiba gave him a slight smile, as if she’d heard that purr a thousand different times, from a thousand different males. “Pleased as I am to see your handsome face, I’d like to know why you called this meeting. Unless the Danika thing was an excuse to talk to sweet Bryce.”
The Danika thing. Bryce kept her face neutral, even as she felt Hunt watching her carefully. As if he could hear her heart thundering, scent the sweat now coating her palms.
But Bryce gave him a bored look in return.
Micah leaned back in his chair, crossing his long legs, and said without so much as glancing at Bryce, “Tempting as your assistant is, we have important matters to discuss.”
She ignored the outright entitlement, the timbre of that sensual voice. Tempting—as if she were a piece of dessert on a platter. She was used to it, but … these gods-damned Vanir males.
Jesiba waved with ethereal grace to continue, silver nails sparkling in the hotel’s lamplight.
Micah said smoothly, “I believe my triarii informed Miss Quinlan of the murder last night. One that was an exact match for the deaths of Danika Fendyr and the Pack of Devils two years ago.”
Bryce kept herself still, unfeeling. She took a subtle inhale of the soothing peppermint wisps from the infuser a few inches away.
Micah went on, “What they did not mention was the other connection.”
The two angels flanking the Governor stiffened almost imperceptibly. This was clearly the first they were hearing of this as well.
“Oh?” Jesiba said. “And do I have to pay for this information?”
Vast, cold power crackled in the gallery, but the Archangel’s face remained unreadable. “I am sharing this information so we might combine resources.”
Jesiba arched a blond brow with preternatural smoothness. “To do what?”
Micah said, “For Bryce Quinlan to find the true murderer behind this, of course.”
12
Bryce had gone still as death—so unmoving that Hunt wondered if she knew it was a solid tell. Not about her own nerves, but about her heritage. Only the Fae could go that still.
Her boss, the young-faced sorceress, sighed. “Is your 33rd so incompetent these days that you truly need my assistant’s help?” Her lovely voice hardly softened her question. “Though I suppose I already have my answer, if you falsely convicted Philip Briggs.”
Hunt didn’t dare grin at her outright challenge. Few people could get away with speaking to Micah Domitus, let alone any Archangel, like that.
He considered the four-hundred-year-old sorceress on the screen. He’d heard the rumors: that Jesiba answered to the Under-King, that she could transform people into common animals if they provoked her, that she’d once been a witch who’d left her clan for reasons still unknown. Most likely bad ones, if she’d wound up a member of the House of Flame and Shadow.